George Daniell (1911-2002) worked as a freelance commercial photographer from the 1930s to the 1960s and became well known for striking black-and-white photographs of celebrities such as Sophia Loren, Audrey Hepburn, Tennessee Williams, W. H. Auden, and Georgia O'Keeffe.

However, his most important work, in addition to his paintings, are his photographs of dock workers, fishermen, swimmers, and ballet dancers, which celebrate the male figure. His sensual photographs are only now being recognized as important contributions to gay male photography.

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George Dureau

New Orleans artist George Dureau (b. 1930) may be best known for his paintings and drawings, but his black-and-white photographs, often of black youths, street trade, dwarfs, and amputees, are not only striking in their own right, but also have had an immense influence on the work of Robert Mapplethorpe, among others.

Although Mapplethorpe adopted many of the same compositions and poses utilized by Dureau, the effects of the two men's work are quite different. Whereas Mapplethorpe's photography aspires to a kind of classical objectivity, Dureau's is warmer and more involved, evincing compassion as well as desire.

Robert Flynt

Robert Flynt (b. 1956) lives and works in New York City. He creates surreal and sensual photo-montages of the male nude. At times, using an underwater camera, Flynt captures the weightless and ethereal movements of his models. He frequently collaborates with performance artists and dancers. His work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Flynt frequently utilizes secondary images drawn from a variety of sources, including anatomy charts, first aid textbooks, X-rays, astronomical maps, nineteenth-century etchings, men's wear catalogues, and even classic Roman sculptures. Such overlapping of images allows Flynt to create collage-like effects that begin with the male form but ultimately transcend it.

His work is complex, reminiscent of nineteenth-century photography and alternative process-based photography from the 1970s, but employing contemporary innovations that replace darkroom manipulations with digital ones. He has published several books, including Compound Fracture (1996).

Robert Giard

In 1985 photographer Robert Giard (1939-2002) set out to create an archive of portraits of gay and lesbian writers from across the United States. His intention was to present visible evidence of their presence in our culture and to document their particular voices. His book, Particular Voices: Portraits of Gay and Lesbian Writers (1998) contains 182 of the more than 500 portraits Giard has made.

Gilbert & George

British artists Gilbert Proesch (b. 1943) and George Passmore (b. 1942) began collaborating in the late 1960s, when they adopted the name Gilbert & George. They met and studied at St. Martins School of Art in London in 1967.

Pushing the boundaries of art making, they were first known for their performance piece "The Singing Sculpture" in which, with hands and face covered in metallic paint, they became literally a singing sculpture. In foregrounding action, time, and space, Gilbert & George challenged the material privileging of the object over the artistic intention.

The duo is perhaps best known for their large-scale photographic collages in which they often represent themselves. Created from individual squares the larger images are several meters tall. Homoerotic in content, many of their photographic works have a gay subtext and often confront political and social issues.

David Hockney

Born in Bradford, England in 1937, Hockney lives in England and Los Angeles. He began his career as a painter who worked in a highly figurative manner. He quickly earned an unusual degree of success, becoming one of the best known artists of his time, and soon branched out into stage design.

Hockney employs the solid color fields usually associated with modernist abstraction but in the service of his compositions. In doing so, he creates images that are striking in their palette and distinguished by the juxtaposition of solidly rendered figures and objects against flat, abstracted fields of color. His paintings and etchings are often strongly homoerotic, especially those now known as the "Love Paintings."

Hockney began using photography to assist his painting and to photograph his young male friends and models. As he continued to experiment with polaroid cameras, he began to combine individual polaroid images to create larger composite images. These popular polaroid and snapshot assemblage pieces suggest the same playfulness found in his other artistic works.

Although not strictly a photographer, Hockney has made an important contribution to gay male photography. His photographic works now have as many fans as his paintings, drawings, and set designs.